THE Port of Newcastle should have an inbound gas terminal to provide gas for new electricity generators in the Hunter Region, Labor’s Joel Fitzgibbon has said. Labor’s spokesperson on rural and regional Australia, Mr Fitzgibbon says “four years of energy confusion have put Australia on the brink of an energy crisis”. He said gas-fired power was needed in the transition to renewables. Australia had plenty of gas and could ship it “from the Indian Ocean to Asia”, but it did not have “the wit to ship it to the eastern seaboard”. Mr Fitzgibbon said Newcastle was the best place to build a liquid natural gas receival terminal. New gas-fired power stations could be built in the buffer zones surrounding the existing coal-fired power stations coming to the end of their commercial lives. Gas company Eastern Star proposed a Newcastle gas terminal in 2010, but to export coal-seam gas from its Narrabri project. Eastern Star paid $25 million for 24 hectares at Walsh Point, Kooragang Island. The project did not proceed and the land went back on the market.

Fitzgibbon calls for Newcastle gas import terminal | poll

INDUSTRIAL ESTATE: Aerial view of Kooragang Island with Walsh Point in the distance, where the north and south arms of the Hunter River meet.

THE Port of Newcastle should have an inbound gas terminal to provide gas for new electricity generators in the Hunter Region, Labor’s Joel Fitzgibbon has said.

Labor’s spokesperson on rural and regional Australia, Mr Fitzgibbon says “four years of energy confusion have put Australia on the brink of an energy crisis”.

He said gas-fired power was needed in the transition to renewables. Australia had plenty of gas and could ship it “from the Indian Ocean to Asia”, but it did not have “the wit to ship it to the eastern seaboard”.

Mr Fitzgibbon said Newcastle was the best place to build a liquid natural gas receival terminal. New gas-fired power stations could be built in the buffer zones surrounding the existing coal-fired power stations coming to the end of their commercial lives.

Gas company Eastern Star proposed a Newcastle gas terminal in 2010, but to export coal-seam gas from its Narrabri project. Eastern Star paid $25 million for 24 hectares at Walsh Point, Kooragang Island. The project did not proceed and the land went back on the market.